Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
Wealthy Sunny von Bülow lies brain-dead, husband Claus guilty of attempted murder; but he says he's innocent and hires Alan Dershowitz for his appeal.
Reversal of Fortune is anchored by Jeremy Irons's Oscar-winning performance as the icily urbane Claus von Bülow, which alone elevates the film well above its peers. The dual-narrator structure—Sunny's ghostly voice-over alongside Dershowitz's legal machinations—adds a distinctive layer of irony, though the courtroom procedural framework is fairly conventional. Ron Silver is strong as Dershowitz, and the ensemble is solid throughout. Barbet Schroeder's direction is competent but not visually adventurous. The ending is appropriately ambiguous, mirroring the real-world legal outcome, which is satisfying thematically but not dramatically explosive. The film's greatest asset remains Irons's singular, reptilian charm, which makes the whole enterprise memorable.